LJ Idol Week 6: Not of Your World
My mom is always saying that my sister Sarah lives in her own world. But she doesn't mean it in the way that people usually do. My sister's never been a daydreamer. My Sarah’s world, the world in her mind, is her reality.
In Sarah’s world, there’s no stress. There’s no work, no school. There’s no fighting, no cursing, no meanness at all. Everyone wants to be her friend. Everyone wants a hug, a high five, a pat on the back. Everyone gets along.
* * *
Sarah "retired" recently, at the age of 20. At least that's what she tells people when they ask her what she's doing: "I'm enjoying my retirement. Work was too stressful for me.”
She does seem to be enjoying it. She’s laughing more than she used to. She’s happier than we've seen her in a very long time.
The counselor who only a few weeks ago was encouraging Sarah to continue working now supports her "retirement" because she believes working was too stressful for Sarah. The psychiatrist who Sarah has been seeing for at least five years said at her last appointment, shortly after Sarah's "retirement," that she has never seen Sarah so happy and that whatever has changed is obviously helping.
We used to think that the depression and the voices came when Sarah got too caught up in her mind, when she didn't have something to distract her from her thoughts. We worried about summer break because then she wouldn’t have the predictable routine of school. We got her involved in groups and activities. When she graduated from high school this past May, my mom started taking her into work with her to help out a few days a week.
But the stress continued. The sadness and the short temper were still there.
And now, suddenly, they aren’t.
She’s no longer working. She’s no longer going to school. She’s listening to music, watching TV, making “domino tricks,” and getting on the treadmill as long as we encourage her to do so.
And she’s happy. Honestly. I haven’t seen her like this in . . . I really don’t know.
Now that she’s home so much, “in her head” and with her thoughts more than ever before, you'd think the depression would get worse. But it hasn’t. Maybe school and work were more stressful for her than any of us ever imagined. Maybe this really is what she needs.
But how can it be, when we know that the world isn’t like that? Some people curse. Some people are just mean. Everyone is stressed once in a while.
We try to help her understand, to find ways of coping with the parts of the world that make her angry, that make her sad. We want her to be happy, to laugh and to smile. we love our Sarah.
We’ve seen the other, darker side of the world in her mind, the one that appears when she gets too sad or too angry or too stressed out by the things in this world that are beyond her control. In that world, there is screaming and crying and cursing. There is depression. There are voices. And there are hospital stays.
And it hurts because I know she doesn’t understand all of this. That must be so very lonely. She’s almost 21 years old, but she has the mind of an eight-year-old. I catch myself calling her a kid all the time. To us, she still is. And we just want her to be happy. I guess that’s why we let her live in her world more often than we probably should. Because it makes her happy.
But, as much as she is a part of the world in her mind, a utopian world where everyone loves each other, she is also a part of this world, a world where there is sadness, there is stress, and there is meanness. But there are also good things. It is possible to be happy in this world, too. I hope that eventually Sarah will find that, and then she won’t need to “retire” from the stresses of everyday life to be happy in the world in her mind.
In Sarah’s world, there’s no stress. There’s no work, no school. There’s no fighting, no cursing, no meanness at all. Everyone wants to be her friend. Everyone wants a hug, a high five, a pat on the back. Everyone gets along.
* * *
Sarah "retired" recently, at the age of 20. At least that's what she tells people when they ask her what she's doing: "I'm enjoying my retirement. Work was too stressful for me.”
She does seem to be enjoying it. She’s laughing more than she used to. She’s happier than we've seen her in a very long time.
The counselor who only a few weeks ago was encouraging Sarah to continue working now supports her "retirement" because she believes working was too stressful for Sarah. The psychiatrist who Sarah has been seeing for at least five years said at her last appointment, shortly after Sarah's "retirement," that she has never seen Sarah so happy and that whatever has changed is obviously helping.
We used to think that the depression and the voices came when Sarah got too caught up in her mind, when she didn't have something to distract her from her thoughts. We worried about summer break because then she wouldn’t have the predictable routine of school. We got her involved in groups and activities. When she graduated from high school this past May, my mom started taking her into work with her to help out a few days a week.
But the stress continued. The sadness and the short temper were still there.
And now, suddenly, they aren’t.
She’s no longer working. She’s no longer going to school. She’s listening to music, watching TV, making “domino tricks,” and getting on the treadmill as long as we encourage her to do so.
And she’s happy. Honestly. I haven’t seen her like this in . . . I really don’t know.
Now that she’s home so much, “in her head” and with her thoughts more than ever before, you'd think the depression would get worse. But it hasn’t. Maybe school and work were more stressful for her than any of us ever imagined. Maybe this really is what she needs.
But how can it be, when we know that the world isn’t like that? Some people curse. Some people are just mean. Everyone is stressed once in a while.
We try to help her understand, to find ways of coping with the parts of the world that make her angry, that make her sad. We want her to be happy, to laugh and to smile. we love our Sarah.
We’ve seen the other, darker side of the world in her mind, the one that appears when she gets too sad or too angry or too stressed out by the things in this world that are beyond her control. In that world, there is screaming and crying and cursing. There is depression. There are voices. And there are hospital stays.
And it hurts because I know she doesn’t understand all of this. That must be so very lonely. She’s almost 21 years old, but she has the mind of an eight-year-old. I catch myself calling her a kid all the time. To us, she still is. And we just want her to be happy. I guess that’s why we let her live in her world more often than we probably should. Because it makes her happy.
But, as much as she is a part of the world in her mind, a utopian world where everyone loves each other, she is also a part of this world, a world where there is sadness, there is stress, and there is meanness. But there are also good things. It is possible to be happy in this world, too. I hope that eventually Sarah will find that, and then she won’t need to “retire” from the stresses of everyday life to be happy in the world in her mind.